Perdition
by wallyflower
Summary: A teacher's dilemma. A drama in three parts. SSHG
1. The Truth of Summer's Lie

Perdition 

_i. The truth of summer's lie_

He couldn't have missed it. Being a quintessential Gryffindor, she was by definition bad at dissembling.

He first noticed it when she came to his office one October afternoon. She'd knocked and opened the door an inch when he'd muttered a bored "Come in". Her wild curls caught the light, and her eyes blinked up at him. He felt the usual stir of annoyance at her appearance and returned his attention to the papers he was grading. The door creaked open and she crept in; she was so shy. From the corner of his eye he saw the gleam of her Head Girl badge and her stance as she stood uncertainly at the front of his desk, her eyes fixed on the floor as she waited to be acknowledged.

"Well, Miss Granger?" he had said, finally. "I presume you did not come here to observe the dungeon flooring."

She'd raised her eyes. They were so bright, and he saw that there was something in her expression, something that hadn't been there before. Something that he filed away for future reference because he could not decipher it now.

"Professor Dumbledore sent me, Sir," she said. "He wanted to know if you would like to accompany the head girl and boy in chaperoning this Saturday's Hogsmeade trip." She spoke a little bit too fast, the words tripping over themselves in her haste. She paused, then plunged on, her expectancy evident. "Professor Sinistra is going away for the weekend, Sir, and if you could—"

"What makes you think I would sentence myself to an entire afternoon in the company of the silliest brats in Britain?" he interrupted her, effectively dismissing her request.

She left soon after, and he was free to resume his grading with no more thought to the Head Girl and her requests. But before he'd turned his eyes to Colin Creevey's essay, before he'd sent her on her way and heard her mutter an apology for wasting his time, he had seen the corners of her mouth turn down and the brightness disappear from her eyes.

-----

She came often after that, always with some request or question. "Professor, Madame Pomfrey is asking, have you already finished this month's stock of Pepper-Up?" "Sir, Professor McGonagall wants to know, are you coming to this afternoon's staff and student council meeting?"

With time, as the sound of her footsteps on the stones grew more and more familiar, she grew bolder with her questions. He observed her with narrowed eyes as she lied through her teeth. "Professor Snape, I'm sorry to bother you, but I've simply forgotten, when is the sleeping draught essay due again?" "Professor, is there anything I could do for extra credit?" He always snarled at her to leave, and there was always that same descent of the corners of her mouth but days later she was there again, undeterred. She was so transparent.

There came a day when even he was surprised at her audacity. She'd stood in front of his desk and inquired, "Professor Snape, Madame Pomfrey told me that you were going to brew her a batch of Dreamless Sleep."

He began to fear what her request might be, and rallied all of his intellectual forces in the formation of a suitably cutting "no". "You spend far too much time in the Hospital Wing, Miss Granger," he remarked. It occurred to him that she no longer braided her hair, but always kept it loose and visibly well-brushed. He noticed the tightness of her sweater. It was impossible; this was impossible. Yet there it was. How to turn her away? "What is the matter? Have you run out of professors to suck up to that you have resorted to the local mediwitch?"

She stiffened. He expected her to leave. But amazingly, incredibly, she relaxed, and offered him a blinding smile. He noticed the artificial evenness of her teeth.

"Professor Snape, I only wanted to ask you if you would let me assist you." She placed a hand on his desk and he looked upon it as an intruder, repulsed and disquieted. "I would appreciate the opportunity to acquire brewing experience very much."

His desk was a fortress and she was an invader. He knew her motives now; there could be no more room for doubt. He did not understand—would never really understand—why, instead of fortifying his defences, he let his territory be conquered.

"Presumptuous girl," he'd said, regretting the words as soon as they left his mouth. Only an outright refusal would have deterred her, and he had doomed himself to having her for an assistant.

Her smile widened. Coming from him, this short speech was almost an invitation.

---

She was always around, and she seemed to believe that his decision not to refuse her guaranteed her a special place in the dungeons. He conceded to himself that she brewed the potions competently, and to avoid spending more time with her than necessary, he let her do the brewing by herself, locking himself up in his office. He was taking severe advantage of her offer and sometimes spared a thought for all the homework that she was not doing to make time to brew, but dismissed it. Justifications weaved themselves in his mind. She needed the experience. He'd agreed because he was a very busy man, and assigning him to brew potions with no extra pay was unfair of the Headmaster in any case. She had offered to do this and he was generous enough to take her up on it.

The day that he found a shiny, red, perfect apple on his desk, he decided that things had to end.

(end of chapter)

**AN**: The story title is a reference to Othello and the quotation that begins: "Perdition catch my soul". The chapter title is from a poem by E. E. Cummings. Also, for those waiting for me to finish my WiPs, I am still working on _Yours and Yours and Yours_.


	2. Cruelty

b A/N. /b The reason for the delay, apart from my own procrastination, is that my draft of the second chapter went missing. I was not lying when I said that, at the time I posted the first chapter, the second was already written. To finish this "revised" chapter I've had to work from scratch, which wasn't the easiest thing to do.

To be perfectly honest, people reviewing that they would like to see where this story leads made me uneasy. This short story is actually just what the summary says it is—a teacher's dilemma. It won't have any unpredictable twists. It just explores the idea of a teacher unable to imagine how or why any sort of interest in him should be expressed, and trying to put a stop to any such unhealthy interest. It's an idea that we in the SSHG subfandom take for granted—student falls for teacher (or vice versa) and after expressing a few scruples they fall into each other's arms, or not. I just wanted to explore that dimension without going into the "Oh no, I'm a monster, I don't deserve her" litany.

**ii. Cruelty**

It was not difficult to find her. If he could find any fault with her, it would be that she was too predictable. He could sum her up in a few sentences: She was hideously sentimental and very much ashamed of it; she liked being thought of as clever but would never take any credit that didn't rightly belong to her; as sensible as she usually was, she was gullible and prone to hero-worshipping her elders; she wanted to be attractive to boys but didn't have the time or patience to try, for the most part. And she was attracted to him.

Her table at the library was (predictably) in a far corner, surrounded by Herbology books that nobody but Neville Longbottom was interested in. She was still unaware of his presence. As he made his way to her he mused that even her interest in him was predictable. It had something to do with both her propensity for hero-worship and her penchant for standing up for people she perceived as underdogs.

Closer to her table now, he stopped for a moment to observe her. She was very young. That much was apparent. Perhaps in another lifetime he would have found it funny—her tight sweaters, her brushed hair, her shorter skirts. The more mature she tried to look the more she underlined the fact that she was still a child. He pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling suddenly tired. He did not need to be bothered with a schoolgirl infatuation. He had so much more to worry about—his duties, his loyalties, his work, the members of his house. Should he have to worry about sparing the feelings of a delusional child? He sighed.

She looked up at the sound, startled, then pleased. The smile spreading across her face reminded him of sunrise and the way the light crept through the forest at daybreak. It made him unreasonably angry. The object in his hands—the bright, offending apple—reminded him why he was here.

He closed the distance between him and her desk, slamming the apple down between them. The smile on her face disappeared and she seemed suddenly afraid. He leaned down until their noses were nearly touching. The knuckles gripping the edge of her side of the table where white, and he could see his reflection in her wide, scared eyes.

"Do not think," he said slowly and in as menacing a way as he could, "that I don't know what you're doing."

It was also predictable, the way she cried.

- - -

When he left the library five minutes later, he could still hear her sobbing. As he moved to open the door, he spotted Madame Pince a few paces away from her desk. She was standing uncertainly, as though torn between returning to her work and going to comfort Miss Granger, whose soft sniffles were the only sound in the otherwise deserted library.

- - -

He was surprised to find her standing in his doorway again. He thought he had put a stop to those visits, and he fought the twinge of annoyance beginning in his gut. She had worn her school robes and so he could not see whether any changes had been made to her inner clothing; he did not know what to expect. He fixed a scowl on his face and braced himself for the worst, and started practicing, in his head, how to tell her to leave.

Whatever he had expected, it wasn't this. She walked quickly and self-consciously to his desk to place a piece of paper in front of him. It took his eyes a moment to focus and see that it was a list from the infirmary.

"Madame Pomfrey told me to give this to you when I came to give her the last batch," she said quickly. She was obviously nervous. He was reminded, all at once, of the first time he had detected her interest in him, and of the frightened look in her eye when he had confronted her in the library. She obviously wished she were somewhere else now. In taking down Pomfrey's note, had she been conjuring another excuse to see him? Or was this what she saw as her last errand for him, and one she was obligated to fulfill despite her own misgivings? He was startled to discover that he could not be sure.

"Yes," he said slowly, trying to read her and not the note. He extended a hand to get it, and was both triumphant and frustrated when she snatched her hand away from it, avoiding any contact with him. "That much is obvious. If that will be all?"

She nodded, and left hurriedly. He was thankful that she shut the door behind him, although it did annoy him that she left the room smelling of freesia, and left him with the vague stirrings of an uneasy conscience.

- - -

"Put everything in a box," he said to the house-elf the next day. "And put the box by the door. Disturb none of the set-ups. Those are mine. Just collect the notes, and that atrocious chewed quill, and those notebooks you see over there."

He didn't linger in time to see the curtsy or hear the house-elf's squeaked "Yes, sir!" In moments was out of the lab, where reminders of Miss Granger lingered still, and in his office. He sat down and stared at nothing.

It was all over now, of course. It had been a mistake to let her assist him, letting her think she was in any way special and allowing her interest to blossom further when it should have been nipped in the bud. Why should a young lady expose herself to such ridicule? He did not understand it. And why would she ever think that he might find a girl—with all of her inexperience and incomplete views of the world--attractive? He had no illusions as to his own appeal--he was sure, in fact, that her attraction to him could only mean temporary insanity on her part--but surely she could see that hers would be lacking to a man twice her age.

Her pretentions to maturity, clashing with her childish behavior… this was the wrong way to go about capturing his attention—in a favorable manner at least, he amended, for he had to admit that his attention was precisely what she had. He had been turning the problem over and over again, in his mind, for some time—almost obsessively. It was like a sore tooth. As annoying as he found her, he could not resist speculating on why such a promising individual, who had previously shown herself as possessing good sense, should embark on something so obviously hopeless. He thought again of her hair and the way she had brushed it, and wondered whether he would have taken kind notice of it if, say, he had been younger, or he had been her friend.

A knock sounded on his office door. He jumped, and composed himself, unconsciously smoothing a hand over the front of his robe while his annoyance rose to new heights. He had told her, hadn't he? She'd been cowering behind her desk in the library and he'd been so sure she understood. She'd nodded fearfully at everything he'd said. He'd been temporarily distracted by the bounce of her curls. But in the end he had managed to tell her, in no uncertain terms, that she was _not_ welcome--

"Sir?" Dennis Creevey poked his head into the office.

Snape sank back in his chair. He felt, horribly and irrationally, as though he had been cheated.


	3. Hope

_**A/N. **__After years, the story ends. I did manage to finish a story! Here's a nod to Jane Austen (love springing from gratitude, and all that). Also, as someone who lives in a tropical country, I apologize if I fudge anything about seasons; it's one thing we can't fake knowledge of. _

_The MA in Oxford is not a research degree, to my knowledge. In most other universities—my own, for one—the degree is supposed to be a mark of postgraduate work or thesis rather than residency in the college. Also, it is possible to pursue a DPhil as a BA and in Oxford you are automatically an "MA" if you are able to attain both degrees. (Please feel free to correct me.) "The cloister" is used in the context of the life of a boarding-school academic, not a vow of celibacy._

- - -

September came, as it had for so many years, with an influx of students and the advent of the autumnal cold that set his bones to chilling. He watched, with something akin to regret, the look of wonder on the faces of the children in single file walking beside him; their expressions when they saw the floating candles, the hypnotic beauty of the sky inside the Great Hall. For him there was no joy in his memories of this castle, and as he guided the students into the hall and read their names out loud, he thought of how many autumns and winters had passed in this manner—how many students had passed into and out of his tutelage, and left with nary a kind word nor a backward glance.

He watched with indifference as students were sorted into other houses and his own. It was now long since the lives of his students had ceased to become of personal interest to him.

And it was with a brutal clarity that he remembered those short, turbulent years of the last war—those last students he had defended with his life, and who had now made their way in the world; and it was as though he had given so much of himself for their protection that he now had little, or nothing, to offer for those shining faces who looked at him expectantly each new September. He tried to shrug off the reminder as he returned to his seat and as the banquet began… but he was powerless to mask his surprise when a corporeal reminder of those years was sitting a few seats from his own, calmly eating dinner as though five years had not taken place—five years since her shadow had darkened a doorway in this castle.

Having stopped in his tracks, he made no sound as Minerva, the Headmistress, called him to her chair and whispered in his ear,

"I'm sure you remember Hermione Granger."

- - -

The story was so simple and mundane that he wondered that he had not expected something of the kind. He asked no questions of the Headmistress, careful as he had always been of betraying any sign of interest; but even given his tight-lipped expression Minerva was generous with information both relevant and irrelevant.

Her voice was smooth and gently boastful, and warm with her peculiar pride for her favorite student as she spoke of Miss Granger's achievements in Oxford and her most recently published paper. _Ever the swot_, Snape wanted to say, but somehow the words got lodged somewhere in his throat and never made it past his mouth.

It had never been in any doubt that Hermione Granger would leave Hogwarts to conquer the world. Over a snifter of brandy in Minerva's office he listened quietly to the details of her life that he had not bothered to find out in the intervening years. He had had no idea until now about the string of romances she (Miss Granger) had kindled and abandoned, and if Minerva found these things uncharacteristic she said nothing; she was more loquacious on the subject of the great strides her favorite had made in the world of Arithmancy, and her more minor—but nonetheless significant—contributions to Charms (two papers) and the rights of Beasts and Beings (one bill for werewolf rights closed to being passed).

Her close friendship with the Minister of Magic and with the even more public figure of Harry Potter fed speculation that she would run for office. However, she disappointed these expectations by denouncing politics for the cloister, as she decided to continue her studies in Arithmancy and supplement her BA with a DPhil.

Snape managed to ask what she was doing in Hogwarts, and was met with the reply that her DPhil required her to be present in Oxford for only a few days a week. The rest she would spend here teaching the lower forms and working on her thesis with Professor Vector, and wasn't that impressive? Had she not fulfilled all of the promise of her younger self?

With a last swig of amber drink the color of Hermione Granger's eyes, Snape excused himself and left.

- - -

Snape stood at the doorway to Professor Granger's rooms, fighting the urge to run away like a frightened child. He was more composed now than he had been the day before, in Minerva's office, but in some ways her (Granger's) appointment had caused him more surprised than was easily recovered from. As Deputy Headmaster he ought to have been better prepared, ought to have been informed earlier. Ought to be more indifferent.

The suite of rooms on the fourth floor bore little resemblance to his own, and it suited her very well; he could tell that its colors would be warm and inviting even as the sitting room was strewn with boxes, notes, and the lingering hairs of Professor Granger's cat. The owner herself was sitting, cross-legged, on the floor, with her back to the doorway where Snape stood in his indecision. He started when she spoke.

"How long are you going to stand there, Professor Snape? I must ask you to close the door. You're letting in quite a draft."

They spent the rest of the evening unpacking her books and extending the dimensions of her rooms as necessary. There were things he wanted to say. He wanted to say that were it not for his position as Deputy—for he could not have given her a bigger bathroom or a smaller fireplace if Hogwarts did not recognize his magic as well as the Headmistress'—he would not be here. And then he wanted to apologize for saying so. He wanted also to say that he was glad that she had come, wanted to pretend nonchalance as though nothing of interest had happened between them. He wanted to ask if she had forgotten it already, if that was why she was able to sit here softly chatting with him even has he gave her nothing but monosyllabic replies.

He wanted to ask if she still felt the same.

When the last book had been shoved in place and Crookshanks the half-kneazle retreated into Professor Granger's bedroom for the night, an awkward silence descended. There were so many things he wanted to say and could hardly decide which of them was most important, but there was no denying the fact that before anything else, something vital had to be said, something that had taken him five years…

"Professor Granger." He cleared his throat, opened his mouth—stopped, and tried again. "Professor Granger, there is something I would… That is to say, I would like to apologize…"

He watched as Professor Granger froze, then relaxed and laughed softly. He was unable to continue. He watched her face anxiously—watched the changes of expression there, looked at all of the places where her face and hair and figure were different. He wished that he could read her now as easily as he could have all those years ago. She waved her hand dismissively and said,

"Water under the bridge, Professor. Give it no further thought."

And she smiled, and whatever her words had been, her smile was sincere.

- - -

His footsteps echoed in the halls leading down to the dungeons. He scattered students in his wake, and he was oblivious to them all.

Sooner than it should have come, those five years ago, graduation had arrived—and with it a multitude of tasks that kept him distracted for the better part of a month. Settling accounts for broken flasks and melted cauldrons kept Professor Snape occupied enough so that he could ignore the nagging thought that there was something that needed doing, something he needed to say.

He had watched silently as Hermione Granger—for she was no Professor back then, only a simple girl with a blossoming promise that made her radiant on her very last day on the grounds—turned and left the castle and its inhabitants, perhaps forever. It was an anticlimax, and he told himself that it was no better than what she deserved. He was grateful to have been spared the horror of her coming to seek him out and thank him, as she did with all of her other professors. He was glad not to have been given a gift, as they all had been, for the one gift that he had received from her—that apple with a red so vivid that it was impossible to forget its shade—had been unwelcome in the extreme.

And yet he was unable to put from his mind the specter of Hermione Granger's eyes as she sat crying in the library while he took the simplicity of her affection and crushed it underfoot.

He had been unable for many years now to procure the admiration and desire of any woman. Some days, it seemed even to himself that his persona was something cultivated, something too contrived to be wholly real. He could not forget that even given this, the exaggerated version of everything that was unpleasant about himself, someone had cut herself open to ridicule for the sake of being close to him.

He listened intently at the staff table for any word about her, and he was able to gather from the newspapers enough to let him know the work she was doing, the ripples that her movements caused in their society. If his colleagues were surprised that he had acquired a personal subscription for _The Daily Prophet_, they said nothing, and he was content to listen to them as they talked about the affairs of former students, picking out her name among the tangle of their discussions. He stored those thoughts away, to be pondered later at night in the interval between lying down and falling asleep.

In sleep she could not be escaped. He found himself ridiculous and understood his dreams and his growing preoccupation to be the hallmarks of an ugly man grateful for any sort of attention, no matter how undesired it was at first. He told himself that he could not have done things any differently, that even if he had been unscrupulous and deluded enough to want to entertain her affections, the consequences would have made him regret his actions almost immediately.

It was the _almost_ that bothered him. Surely it could not be pure folly to wonder what it would have been like, to have her for himself. He pondered the similarities in their dispositions and thought that had things been different—had she been older and had his position been different—he would have liked to read with her in his sitting room. Their discussions in the dungeons, when he had allowed himself to indulge her pretensions to working there for extra credit, had been a facsimile of this domestic comfort. He imagined her hair in the firelight—imagined telling her about all of those things he had admired about her, and had never been able to verbalize.

He looked for her everywhere, digging himself deeper and deeper into a hole from which he might never climb out again; because there was no solution to his problem, and all of those questions he wanted to ask—had she really wanted him, could she want him now, was he merely blowing things out of proportion and giving her feelings more importance than they merited—would never be answered. Would never even be asked, for he had not the courage to find her and pursue her, to see if the reality of her could be as wonderful as the dreams he had manufactured for himself.

The last five years were a study in how love could take root from gratitude, even when its recipient was nowhere to be found.

- - -

He knocked on the door to her office, cursing himself for a fool.

It was only the uttermost presumption to think that such a visit could bear fruit. But he could not rest until he had tried. He forced himself to think_, Coward_, and the word straightened his spine and made him act with a bravery he did not really possess.

It was five years now, five long years of loneliness and the unfulfilled hope that he would see her when he turned a corner or opened a shop door. It was only fitting that their positions be reversed.

She looked up when he entered; she was seated at her desk, taking notes from a book levitated in front of her. When her eyes met his the book fell to the desk with a harsh sound, startling them both. It was now or never.

He crossed the room, feeling the uncertainty in his very knees. The seconds stretched out before him, and she said nothing as he stopped inches in front of her desk; the serious expression on his face must have been a fearsome thing to behold.

It was perhaps the most courageous thing he had ever done. He lifted a shaking hand, searched in a pocket of his frock coat, and pulled out something that he set gingerly on her desk, on top of the fallen book. He searched her face, his hope and dread clear on his own; and he was not disappointed. There was only pleased gratitude and a blossoming hope in the polished amber of her eyes.

For when she saw the shiny, red, perfect apple on her desk, she knew what to do.

_end_


End file.
